Markets

Smartphones

Mobile devices—smartphones, phablets, and tablets—are everywhere. People use mobile devices to conduct many activities that they used to commonly perform on personal computers. From communicating with friends, family, and coworkers, to surfing the Internet, to shooting photos and videos, to listening to music, to playing games, to managing fitness goals, appointments and personal finances—today’s mobile devices enable people to do all these things, and more.

Hundreds of millions of mobile devices are shipped globally each year. According to IDC Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, phone companies shipped a total of 341.6 million smartphones worldwide in the second quarter of 2017. The growing worldwide demand for mobile wireless communications and mobile multimedia applications is driving the proliferation of mobile devices. The evolution of mobile wireless networks from predominantly voice-centric networks to advanced high-speed networks that deliver voice, video and data is enabling consumers to access bandwidth-intensive, rich media content on mobile devices through applications such as videoconferencing, streaming media and interactive gaming.

The size and connectivity of today’s mobile devices enable people to share communications and information in unprecedented ways. Because of this increased sharing demand, mobile devices must be able to support and manage ever-increasing data consumption and fifth generation wireless (5G) transmissions.

The growing combinations of mode and band are exponentially increasing the complexity of mobile devices. With more than 40 different frequency bands being used across the globe to support long-term evolution (LTE) of high-speed wireless communication, the number of bands a mobile device needs to support is quickly growing. This is even true for a regional-specific handset due to the band fragmentation that LTE has created. As a result, mobile devices have evolved from supporting only a single cellular standard, operating on two or three frequencies and utilizing a single antenna to supporting multiple wireless protocols, supporting many frequency bands and integrating multiple antennas. This complexity is driving the need for improved radio frequency (RF) performance—specifically linearity, isolation and bandwidth. The increased complexity in mobile wireless devices means RF filter and RF switch content must grow exponentially compared to other components in the RF front-end (RFFE).

Our UltraCMOS®-based core RF solutions equip mobile devices with the capability to enable seamless connectivity between billions of connected devices. For the next set of mobile standards, pSemi works with global operators and industry organizations, like 3GPP, to develop cutting edge RF solutions to meet the requirements of thinner phones with multiple antennas. We optimize our RF solutions to meet smart phone form-factors with best-in-class RF performance.

Our Products for Smartphones

RF switches

Antenna tuning switches

Wi-Fi front-end modules

Bluetooth® front-end modules

Low-noise amplifiers (LNAs)

Personal Computers

Personal Computers

Personal computers are used throughout businesses, homes, educational facilities, and other institutions to perform individual or shared word processing, Internet research and communications, information and file sharing, and other applications. Tens of millions of PCs are shipped worldwide each quarter.

Power management is a critical aspect of personal computer use from both a physical size perspective and a longevity perspective. Power components occupy much space inside PCs, so manufacturers want a smaller power footprint. Backlit displays drain battery power; users want longer-lasting batteries.

pSemi’s power products, which are scalable by power and input voltage, enable huge increases in power conversion efficiency, with a substantially-reduced size and lower overall cost. pSemi produces LED backlight boost converters, which provide up to 10% improvement in LED backlight efficiency, and buck regulators for core voltage (VCORE), VCCIO, memory, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which provide an improvement in conversion efficiency.

pSemi’s power products reduce PC power management footprint by >50%, height of components by factor 3x, and losses in power management by up to one half, while increasing platform run-time by more than 1 hour.

Our Products for Personal Computers

LED backlight boost converters

Wi-Fi FEMs

Bluetooth FEMs

Base Stations

Base Stations

With increased data consumption and mobile device connectivity demands, demand for base stations is also increasing. A base station is a fixed-location wireless communication station, with one or more antennas, that receives and transmits signals in a cellular network to phones and other devices.

The combination of an increasing global subscriber base, expansion of advanced wireless networks and the proliferation of powerful devices offering high-speed wireless Internet access has dramatically increased mobile data traffic. This increase in data traffic is straining the existing wireless network infrastructure. As a result, operators are expanding their network capacity by acquiring additional wireless spectrum and by aggressively deploying long term evolution (LTE), time division-LTE (TD-LTE) and LTE-A networks.

In addition to the traditional macro network, which is used for wide area coverage, the rollout of smaller base station formats are being pursued. These formats include picocell, small cell and carrier-grade Wi-Fi solutions to support growing data requirements in urban areas. These products will increase data capacity and will be used in areas with poor coverage.

Wireless backhaul is one of many options to connect the base station to the core network, and, as data consumption grows, so does the need for high-speed backhaul. Line of sight (LOS) microwave solutions are used extensively and offer high data rate wireless backhaul solutions. With the rollout of small cells in urban environments where LOS is not always simple to achieve, non-line of sight (NLOS) solutions are being deployed, which offer lower date rates but can be used to increase the flexibility of the backhaul deployment.

Our Products for Base Stations

Multi-throw RF switches

Rx VGA modules

Mixers

Digital step attenuators

Power limiters

Data Centers

Data Centers

Data centers, which house computer systems and associated components, are being affected by increasing demands for bandwidth, especially because of cloud adoption. The cloud is shifting which data centers host it, and where, according to JLL North America. Data centers must be able to accommodate the data demands driven by cloud-based applications with larger bandwidth and faster speed requirements.

Because of these increasing demands, data centers are employing fiber optic cabling and optical transceiver solutions. Fiber optic cables transmit data faster than many other mediums, have less attenuation, and are not affected by electromagnetic interference (EMI). Optical transceivers transmit and receive data, in the form of light pulses, using fiber optic technology.

Our Products for Data Centers

Power management modules

Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles

The automotive market is driving large growth in the RF semiconductor arena, primarily with the growth of telematics and infotainment systems.

The telematics umbrella covers many of the high-growth segments of the automotive sector. These applications include GPS navigation, integrated hands-free cell phones, wireless safety communications and automatic driving assistance systems such as automatic cruise control and anti-collision radar.

The other large growth area is in the in-car entertainment sector where audio, visual and media entertainment systems are being integrated into vehicles. These devices are now commonly being connected via either a Wi-Fi or cellular internet connection to enable a connected car.

Another force driving growth in the automotive market is the advent of driverless cars. Driverless vehicles rely on connected sensors that can perceive the vehicle’s state and external surroundings and devices.

pSemi is a technical committee member on the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC), an organization that provides common part-qualification and quality-system standards for the automotive electronics industry. pSemi supplies a range of AEC-Q100 certified switch products for the automotive market. These automotive products adhere to the strict AEC-Q100, Grade 2 requirements, the AEC’s stress test qualification for integrated circuits. This level of qualification enables ODMs to confidently use pSemi's products in an automotive environment without additional component-level qualification testing. Additionally, pSemi maintains TS-16949 compliance and certification.

Our Products for Electric Vehicles

Multi-throw RF switches

LNA

Power management ICs

Wi-Fi FEMs

Bluetooth® FEMs

IoT Devices

IoT Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of devices or objects that are connected to the Internet via cellular networks, Wi-Fi, and the like. IoT enables a broad array of devices to be connected including robots on manufacturing floors, healthcare devices, wearable and embedded products and home/factory energy management systems. The common theme for these IoT devices is their ability to sense and communicate with their environments, including other devices, and to collect data that is used to optimize and improve their performance.

Many of these devices are wireless and battery-powered and, in many cases, are required to have multiyear lifetimes. These key characteristics drive the need for high-performance, low-power devices that must be cost effective in order to be viable for the huge potential volumes being tied to the Internet of Things